Model Based Deployment Of Computer Based Business Process On Dedicated Hardware

ABSTRACT

A method of automated deployment managed by a service provider, of a computer based business process, involves generating a model ( 730 ) of the business process including a design of computing infrastructure, and deploying the model on hardware ( 770 ) dedicated to the enterprise, with an interface for the service provider to enable ongoing management of the deployed process by the service provider. Having dedicated hardware means the location of the hardware can be arranged to suit the enterprise. This means limitations such as bandwidth or latency of WAN links, can be addressed by choosing the location of the dedicated hardware appropriately. Trust of security can also be increased compared to that of the shared data centres. The automated model driven deployment can help enable the service provider to provide such deployments on different types of hardware. The need for the enterprise to maintain specialist expertise in house is reduced.

This application relates to copending U.S. applications titled “SETTINGUP DEVELOPMENT ENVIRONMENT FOR COMPUTER BASED BUSINESS PROCESS”(applicant reference number 200702145), titled “VISUAL INTERFACE FORSYSTEM FOR DEPLOYING COMPUTER BASED PROCESS ON SHARED INFRASTRUCTURE”(applicant reference number 200702356), titled “MODELING COMPUTER BASEDBUSINESS PROCESS FOR CUSTOMISATION AND DELIVERY” (applicant referencenumber 200702363), titled “MODELING COMPUTER BASED BUSINESS PROCESS ANDSIMULATING OPERATION” (applicant reference number 200702377), titled“AUTOMATED MODEL GENERATION FOR COMPUTER BASED BUSINESS PROCESS”,(applicant reference number 200702600), and titled “INCORPORATINGDEVELOPMENT TOOLS IN SYSTEM FOR DEPLOYING COMPUTER BASED PROCESS ONSHARED INFRASTRUCTURE”, and previously filed US application titled“DERIVING GROUNDED MODEL OF BUSINESS PROCESS SUITABLE FOR AUTOMATICDEPLOYMENT” (Ser. No. 11/741878) all of which are hereby incorporated byreference in their entirety.

FIELD OF THE INVENTION

The invention relates to methods of automated deployment managed by aservice provider, of a computer based business process, and relates tocorresponding systems and software.

BACKGROUND

Physical IT (information technology) infrastructures are difficult tomanage. Changing the network configuration, adding a new machine orstorage device are typically complicated and error prone manual tasks.In most physical IT infrastructure, resource utilization is very low:15% is not an uncommon utilization for a server, 5% for a desktop. Toaddress this, modern computer infrastructures are becoming increasingly(re)-configurable and more use is made of shared infrastructure in theform of data centres provided by service providers.

Hewlett Packard's UDC (Utility Data Centre) is an example which has beenapplied commercially and allows automatic reconfiguration of physicalinfrastructure: processing machines such as servers, storage devicessuch as disks, and networks coupling the parts. Reconfiguration caninvolve moving or starting software applications, changing allocationsof storage space, or changing allocation of processing time to differentprocesses for example. Another way of contributing morereconfigurability, is by allowing many “virtual” computers to be hostedon a single physical machine. The term “virtual” usually means theopposite of real or physical, and is used where there is a level ofindirection, or some mediation between the resource user and thephysical resource.

In addition some modern computing fabrics allow the underlying hardwareto be reconfigured. In once instance the fabric might be configured toprovide a number of four-way computers. In another instance it might bere-configured to provide four times as many single processor computers.

It is extremely complex to model the full reconfigurability of theabove. Models of higher level entities need to be recursive in the senseof containing or referring to lower level entities used or required toimplement them (for example a virtual machine VM, may operate faster orslower depending on what underlying infrastructure is currently used toimplement it (for example hardware partition nPAR or virtual partitionvPAR, as will be described in more detail below). This means a modelneeds to expose the underlying configurability of the next generationcomputer fabrics—an nPAR consists of a particular hardware partition.This makes the models so complex that it becomes increasingly difficultfor automated tools (and humans) to understand and process the models,to enable design and management of: a) the business process, b) theapplication and application configuration, and c) the infrastructure andinfrastructure configuration.

The need to model the full reconfigurability and recursive nature of asystem is exemplified in the DMTF's profile for “System Virtualization,Partitioning and Clustering”:http://www.dmtf.org/apps/org/workgroup/redundancy/

Another example of difficulties in modeling is WO2004090684 whichrelates to modeling systems in order to perform processing functions. Itsays “The potentially large number of components may render the approachimpractical. For example, an IT system with all of its hardwarecomponents, hosts, switches, routers, desktops, operating systems,applications, business processes, etc. may include millions of objects.It may be difficult to employ any manual or automated method to create amonolithic model of such a large number of components and theirrelationships. This problem is compounded by the typical dynamic natureof IT systems having frequent adds/moves/changes. Secondly, there is noabstraction or hiding of details, to allow a processing function tofocus on the details of a particular set of relevant components whilehiding less relevant component details. Thirdly, it may be impracticalto perform any processing on the overall system because of the number ofcomponents involved.”

There have been attempts to automatically and rapidly provide computinginfrastructures: HP's Utility Data Center, HP Lab's SoftUDC, HP's Caveoand Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (which can be seen athttp://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html?node=201590011). All of theseprovide computing infrastructures of one form or another, and some havebeen targeted at testers and developers, e.g. HP's Utility Data Center.

Aris from IDS-Scheer is a known business process modeling platformhaving a model repository containing information on the structure andintended behaviour of the system. In particular, the business processesare modeled in detail. It is intended to tie together all aspects ofsystem implementation and documentation.

Aris UML designer is a component of the Aris platform, which combinesconventional business process modeling with software development todevelop business applications from process analysis to system design.Users access process model data and UML content via a Web browser,thereby enabling processing and change management within a multi-userenvironment. It can provide for creation and communication ofdevelopment documentation, and can link object-oriented design and codegeneration (CASE tools). It relies on human entry of the models.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

An object is to provide improved apparatus or methods. In one aspect theinvention provides:

a method of automated deployment managed by a service provider, of acomputer based business process having a number of functional steps, fora given enterprise, the method having the steps of:

generating a model of the business process, the model having arepresentation of an arrangement of software application components, forimplementing the functional steps, and having a representation ofcomputing infrastructure, for running the software applicationcomponents on specified enterprise dedicated hardware, and suitable forautomated deployment, to meet given non functional requirements if thereare any, and

deploying the model on the hardware dedicated to the enterprise, with aninterface for the service provider to enable ongoing management of thedeployed process by the service provider.

By giving the enterprise dedicated hardware rather than using sharedhardware as in a conventional data centre, the service provider canoffer a combination of some of the advantages of in house services withadvantages of out sourced service provision. For example the enterprisecan reduce or control some of the limitations of having to use sharedhardware in centralised data centres. For example, having dedicatedhardware means the location of the hardware can be arranged to suit theenterprise. This means limitations such as bandwidth or latency of WANlinks, can be addressed by choosing the location of the dedicatedhardware to be on or near the enterprises premises. Having dedicatedhardware can also increase trust of security compared to that of theshared data centres. This can be addressed for example, by theenterprise having control of physical access to the dedicated hardwareand data for example. These benefits are facilitated by the automatedmodel driven deployment, which can help enable the service provider toprovide such deployments on different types of hardware with less needfor skilled personnel and can reduce the need for the hardware to becentrally located. This also reduces the need for the enterprise tomaintain specialist expertise in house. The service provider can alsobenefit by reducing the load (in terms of computing and powerconsumption) on resources in a shared data centre by distributing someof the load onto hardware that operates outside the service provider'sdata centre.

Embodiments of the invention can have any additional features, withoutdeparting from the scope of the claims, and some such additionalfeatures are set out in dependent claims and in embodiments describedbelow.

Another aspect provides software on a machine readable medium which whenexecuted carries out the above method.

Another aspect provides a system, for automated deployment managed by aservice provider, of a computer based business process having a numberof functional steps, for a given enterprise, the system having:

a model generation part arranged to generate a model of the process, themodel having a representation of an arrangement of software applicationcomponents, for implementing the functional steps, and having arepresentation of computing infrastructure, for running the softwareapplication components on the enterprise dedicated hardware, andsuitable for automated deployment, to meet given non functionalrequirements if there are any, and

a deployment part arranged to provide automated deployment of the modelon the hardware dedicated to the enterprise, with an interface for theservice provider to enable ongoing management of the deployed process bythe service provider.

Other aspects can encompass corresponding steps by human operators usingthe system, to enable direct infringement or inducing of directinfringement in cases where the infringers system is partly or largelylocated remotely and outside the jurisdiction covered by the patent, asis feasible with many such systems, yet the human operator is using thesystem and gaining the benefit, from within the jurisdiction. Otheradvantages will be apparent to those skilled in the art, particularlyover other prior art. Any of the additional features can be combinedtogether, and combined with any of the aspects, as would be apparent tothose skilled in the art. The embodiments are examples only, the scopeis not limited by these examples, and many other examples can beconceived within the scope of the claims.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE FIGURES

Specific embodiments of the invention will now be described, by way ofexample, with reference to the accompanying Figures, in which:

FIG. 1 shows a schematic view of an embodiment showing models, adaptiveinfrastructure and a management system,

FIG. 2 shows a schematic view of some operation steps by an operator andby the management system, according to an embodiment,

FIG. 3 shows a schematic view of some of the principal actions andmodels according to an embodiment,

FIG. 4 shows a schematic view of a sequence of steps from businessprocess to deployed model in the form of a model information flow, MIF,according to another embodiment,

FIG. 5 shows a sequence of steps and models according to anotherembodiment,

FIG. 6 shows steps in deriving a grounded model according to anembodiment,

FIG. 7 shows an arrangement of master and slave application servers fora distributed design, according to an embodiment,

FIG. 8 shows parts of a master application server for the embodiment ofFIG. 7,

FIG. 9 shows an arrangement of virtual entities on a server, for use inan embodiment,

FIG. 10 shows an example of a sales and distribution business process(SD) Benchmark Dialog Steps and Transactions,

FIG. 11 shows an example Custom Model Instance for SD Benchmark,

FIG. 12 shows a class diagram for an Unbound Model Class,

FIG. 13 shows an example of a template suitable for a decentralised SDexample,

FIG. 14 shows a Grounded Model instance for a decentralized SD,

FIG. 15 shows another example of a template, suitable for a centralisedsecure SD example,

FIG. 16 shows an embodiment of a system for deployment on enterprisededicated hardware,

FIGS. 17, 18, 19 and 20 show steps according to embodiments, and

FIG. 21 shows a system according to another embodiment.

DESCRIPTION OF SPECIFIC EMBODIMENTS Definitions

“enterprise dedicated hardware” encompasses hardware such as physicalservers, storage and communications links which is for the exclusive useof that enterprise and thus its location can be chosen by theenterprise. It need not be owned by the enterprise, it can be leased orpaid for in any way as part of the cost of the service. It cannot bereallocated or removed except with the permission of the enterprise.Constituent components and identifiers of the parts of the hardware cangenerally be changed by the service provider to meet the needs of theenterprise. The enterprise may permit the service provider to allowother enterprises to make use of spare capacity on a temporary basis.

“non-functional requirements” can encompass how well the functionalsteps are achieved, in terms such as performance, security properties,cost, availability and others. It is explained in Wikipedia(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-functional_requirements) fornon-functional requirements as follows—“In systems engineering andrequirements engineering, non-functional requirements are requirementswhich specify criteria that can be used to judge the operation of asystem, rather than specific behaviors. This should be contrasted withfunctional requirements that specify specific behavior or functions.Typical non-functional requirements are reliability, scalability, andcost. Non-functional requirements are often called the ilities of asystem. Other terms for non-functional requirements are “constraints”,“quality attributes” and “quality of service requirements”.”

“Functional steps” can encompass any type of function of the businessprocess, for any purpose, such as interacting with an operator receivinginputs, retrieving stored data, processing data, passing data orcommands to other entities, and so on, typically but not necessarily,expressed in human readable form.

“Deployed” is intended to encompass a modeled business process for whichthe computing infrastructure has been allocated and configured, and thesoftware application components have been installed and configured readyto become operational. According to the context it can also encompass abusiness process which has started running.

“suitable for automated deployment” can encompass models which providemachine readable information to enable the infrastructure design to bedeployed, and to enable the software application components to beinstalled and configured by a deployment service, either autonomously orwith some human input guided by the deployment service.

“business process” is intended to encompass any process involvingcomputer implemented steps and optionally other steps such as humaninput or input from a sensor or monitor for example, for any type ofbusiness purpose such as service oriented applications, for sales anddistribution, inventory control, control or scheduling of manufacturingprocesses for example. It can also encompass any other process involvingcomputer implemented steps for non business applications such aseducational tools, entertainment applications, scientific applications,any type of information processing including batch processing, gridcomputing, and so on. One or more business process steps can be combinedin sequences, loops, recursions and branches to form a complete BusinessProcess. Business process can also encompass business administrationprocesses such as CRM, sales support, inventory management, budgeting,production scheduling and so on, and any other process for commercial orscientific purposes such as modeling climate, modeling structures, ormodeling nuclear reactions.

“application components” is intended to encompass any type of softwareelement such as modules, subroutines, code of any amount usableindividually or in combinations to implement the computer implementedsteps of the business process. It can be data or code that can bemanipulated to deliver a business process step (BPStep) such as atransaction or a database table. The Sales and Distribution (SD) productproduced by SAP is made up of a number of transactions each having anumber of application components for example.

“unbound model” is intended to encompass software specifying in any way,directly or indirectly, at least the application components to be usedfor each of the computer implemented steps of the business process,without a complete design of the computing infrastructure, and mayoptionally be used to calculate infrastructure resource demands of thebusiness process, and may optionally be spread across or consist of twoor more sub-models. The unbound model can also specify the types orversions of corresponding execution components such as applicationservers and database servers, needed by each application component,without specifying how many of these are needed for example.

“grounded model” is intended to encompass software specifying in anyway, directly or indirectly, at least a complete design of the computinginfrastructure suitable for automatic deployment of the businessprocess. It can be a complete specification of a computinginfrastructure and the application components to be deployed on theinfrastructure.

“bound model” encompasses any model having a binding of the GroundedModel to physical resources. The binding can be in the form ofassociations between ComputerSystems, Disks, StorageSystems, Networks,NICS that are in the Grounded Model to real physical parts that areavailable in the actual computing infrastructure.

“infrastructure design template” is intended to encompass software ofany type which determines design choices by indicating in any way atleast some parts of the computing infrastructure, and indicatingpredetermined relationships between the parts. This will leave a limitednumber of options to be completed, to create a grounded model. Thesetemplates can indicate an allowable range of choices or an allowablerange of changes for example. They can determine design choices byhaving instructions for how to create the grounded model, or how tochange an existing grounded model.

“computing infrastructure” is intended to encompass any type of resourcesuch as hardware and software for processing, for storage such as disksor chip memory, and for communications such as networking, and includingfor example servers, operating systems, virtual entities, and managementinfrastructure such as monitors, for monitoring hardware, software andapplications. All of these can be “designed” in the sense of configuringand/or allocating resources such as processing time or processorhardware configuration or operating system configuration or disk space,and instantiating software or links between the various resources forexample. The resources may or may not be shared between multiplebusiness processes. The configuring or allocating of resources can alsoencompass changing existing configurations or allocations of resources.Computing infrastructure can encompass all physical entities or allvirtualized entities, or a mixture of virtualized entities, physicalentities for hosting the virtualized entities and physical entities forrunning the software application components without a virtualizedlayer.“parts of the computing infrastructure” is intended to encompassparts such as servers, disks, networking hardware and software forexample.

“server” can mean a hardware processor for running application softwaresuch as services available to external clients, or a software elementforming a virtual server able to be hosted by a hosting entity such asanother server, and ultimately hosted by a hardware processor.

“AIService” is an information service that users consume. It implementsa business process.

“Application Constraints Model” can mean arbitrary constraints oncomponents in the Customized Process, Application Packaging andComponent Performance Models. These constraints can be used by tools togenerate additional models as the MIF progresses from left to right.

“ApplicationExecutionComponent” is for example a (worker) process,thread or servlet that executes an Application component. An examplewould be a Dialog Work Process, as provided by SAP.

“ApplicationExecutionService” means a service which can manage theexecution of ApplicationExecutionComponents such as Work Processes,servlets or data-base processes. An example would be an ApplicationServer as provided by SAP. Such an application server includes thecollection of dialog work processes and other processes such as updateand enqueue processes as shown in the diagram of the master applicationserver. (FIG. 8).

“Application Packaging Model” is any model which describes the internalstructure of the software: what products are needed and what modules arerequired from the product, and is typically contained by an unboundmodel.

“Application Performance Model” means any model which has the purpose ofdefining the resource demands, direct and indirect, for each Businessprocess (BP) step. It can be contained in the unbound model.

“Component Performance Model” can mean any model containing the genericperformance characteristics for an Application Component. This can beused to derive the Application Performance Model (which can be containedin the unbound model), by using the specific Business process steps anddata characteristics specified in the Custom Model together withconstraints specified in the Application Constraints Model.

“Custom Model” means a customized general model of a business process toreflect specific business requirements.

“Deployed Model” means a bound model with the binding information forthe management services running in the system.

“Candidate Grounded Model” can be an intermediate model that may begenerated by a tool as it transforms the Unbound Model into the GroundedModel.

“Grounded Component” can contain the installation and configurationinformation for both Grounded Execution Components and GroundedExecution Services, as well as information about policies and start/stopdependencies.

“Grounded Execution Component” can be a representation in the GroundedModel of a (worker) process, thread or servlet that executes anApplication Component.

“Grounded Execution Service” is a representation in the Grounded Modelof the entity that manages the execution of execution components such asWork Processes, servlets or database processes.

“Infrastructure Capability Model” can be a catalogue of resources thatcan be configured by the utility such as different computer types anddevices such as firewalls and load balancers.

MIF (Model Information Flow) is a collection of models used to manage abusiness process through its entire lifecycle.

The present invention can be applied to many areas, the embodimentsdescribed in detail can only cover some of those areas. It can encompassmodeling dynamic or static systems, such as enterprise managementsystems, networked information technology systems, utility computingsystems, systems for managing complex systems such as telecommunicationsnetworks, cellular networks, electric power grids, biological systems,medical systems, weather forecasting systems, financial analysissystems, search engines, and so on. The details modeled will generallydepend on the use or purpose of the model. So a model of a computersystem may represent components such as servers, processors, memory,network links, disks, each of which has associated attributes such asprocessor speed, storage capacity, disk response time and so on.Relationships between components, such as containment, connectivity, andso on can also be represented.

An object-oriented paradigm can be used, in which the system componentsare modeled using objects, and relationships between components of thesystem are modeled either as attributes of an object, or objectsthemselves. Other paradigms can be used, in which the model focuses onwhat the system does rather than how it operates, or describes how thesystem operates. A database paradigm may specify entities andrelationships. Formal languages for system modeling include text basedDMTF Common InformationModel (CIM), Varilog, NS, C++, C, SQL, orgraphically expressed based schemes.

Additional Features

Some examples of additional features for dependent claims are asfollows:

A location of the dedicated hardware can be remote from the serviceprovider and the interface can be arranged for remote management. Thisis useful to distribute the load away from resources at a serviceprovider location, and to ease bandwidth and latency limitations,especially if the location of the dedicated hardware is at an enterprisepremises or at a local trusted internet service provider of theenterprise.

The computing infrastructure can comprise virtualized entities. This isone way of increasing flexibility of allocation of resources, and thusenabling improved efficiency of use of the resources.

The model can incorporate redundant hardware capacity of suitable sizeto enable virtualized entities to be moved off their correspondinghardware components onto the redundant hardware while the process isstill running. This redundancy would normally not need to be included ina model for deployment in a shared data centre as the data centremanagement would provide redundant capacity on a shared basis. Redundantcapacity can also be used to support growth in loads or increases inloads due to changes in functional steps.

The system can have an update part arranged to enable the enterprise toinput alterations to functional steps or non functional requirements,and to cause the model generation part to generate an updated modelbased on the alterations, and determine any changes in requirements forthe dedicated hardware corresponding to the altered functional steps ornon functional requirements.

The system can have a download part to download at least the modelgeneration part to run at an enterprise location. This can helpdistribute the processing, to reduce the load on resources at theservice provider, and can ease security concerns by enabling theenterprise to avoid sending sensitive data to the service provider forexample.

The model can have a monitoring part to monitor behaviour of thedeployed process in use and to send an indication of the behaviourthrough the interface to the service provider. This can enable theservice provider to monitor the deployed process and take appropriateaction. A basic level of service might involve reporting to theenterprise. A higher level of service could involve taking action todeal with infrastructure failures or routine upgrading. A yet higherlevel of service could involve analysing the behaviour and determineproposed changes to the model to improve a match of the computinginfrastructure to the monitored behaviour. This could improve efficiencyof use of resources or finding opportunities to improve flexibility torespond to time varying demands or changes to requirements forfunctional steps for example.

The model generation part can be arranged to select one of a number ofpredetermined templates of computing infrastructure design, chooseparameters to fill the selected template, evaluate the filled templateby simulating operation to see how well the non functional requirementsare met, and alter the selection of template or alter the parametersaccording to the evaluation. This use of an infrastructure designtemplate can reduce the number of options to be evaluated and can helpreduce the complexity of the task of generating a model which can bedeployed and which makes efficient use of resources. This in turn canhelp enable a more highly automated method, or can enable more complexbusiness processes to be deployed more efficiently, and managed moreefficiently. Where the infrastructure includes virtualized entities, theincreased flexibility tends to increase the complexity of the task ofinfrastructure design, and the use of templates becomes even moreappropriate and valuable in this case.

The system can have non functional requirements comprising any one ormore of: a number of concurrent users, throughputs for functions, anindication of desired response time, an availability level, a securitylevel, and limits of available dedicated hardware available. These aretypically significant for the design of the computing infrastructure.

The system can be arranged to determine from the model a specificationof requirements for the dedicated hardware. This can enable appropriatehardware to be set up ahead of the deployment. An alternative,encompassed by other claims, if the dedicated hardware is pre existing,would be to set limits on the performance required of the dedicatedhardware in the non functional requirements. Then the model will beconstrained to stay within such limits so that the model can besuccessfully deployed on the pre existing hardware.

Where a 3-D visual interface is provided with a game server to enablemultiple users to work on the same model and see each others changes,developers can navigate complex models more quickly. Reference is madeto above referenced copending application No. 200702356 for more detailsof examples of this. Combining this with using enterprise dedicatedhardware with an interface to the service provider to enable ongoingmanagement can enable such ongoing management to be provided moreefficiently.

An enterprise interface can be provided to enable the enterprise tocustomise the non functional requirements independently of each other.Reference is made to above referenced copending application No.200702363 for more details of examples of this. Combining this withusing enterprise dedicated hardware with an interface to the serviceprovider to enable ongoing management can enable more completecustomisation to the enterprise's needs.

Where the operation of the business process can be simulated or wheremultiple test deployments can be made in parallel, development can beaccelerated. Reference is made to above referenced copending applicationNo. 200702377 for more details of examples of this. Combining this withusing enterprise dedicated hardware with an interface to the serviceprovider to enable ongoing management can enable the advantages of bothto be enhanced.

Where annotations are inserted in the source code to assist in modelingor in documentation, then documenting the history of changes can be madeeasier. Reference is made to above referenced copending application No.200702600 for more details of examples of this.

Setting up of a development environment can be facilitated by providinga predetermined mapping of which tools are appropriate for a givendevelopment purpose and given part of the model, or by including modelsof tools to be deployed with the model. Reference is made to abovereferenced copending application Nos. 200702145, and 200702601 for moredetails of examples of this. As the use of enterprise dedicated hardwarewith an interface to the service provider can add complexity to thesetting up of the development environment, it is all the more valuableto facilitate such setting up.

Model Based Approach

A general aim of this model based approach is to enable development andmanagement of the business process to provide matched changes to threemain layers: the functional steps of the process, the softwareapplication components used to implement the functional steps of theprocess, and configuration of the computing infrastructure used by theapplications. Such changes are to be carried out automatically by use ofappropriate software tools interacting with software models modeling theabove mentioned parts. Until now there has not been any attempt to linktogether tools that integrate business process, application andinfrastructure management through the entire system lifecycle.

A model-based approach for management of such complex computer basedprocesses will be described. Such models can have structured data modelsin CIM/UML to model the following three layers:

-   -   Infrastructure elements, such as physical machines, VMs, network        links.    -   Application elements, such as Databases, application servers.    -   Business level elements, such as functional steps of business        processes running in the application servers.

A model is an organized collection of elements modeled in UML forexample. A goal of some embodiments is to use these data models for theautomated on-demand provision of enterprise applications following aSoftware as a service (SaaS) paradigm.

Problem Statement

Using Model-Based technologies to automatically design and manageEnterprise Systems can offer powerful predictive power, and thecapability to automatically design, deploy, modify, monitor, and managea running system to implement a business process, while minimizing therequirement for human involvement.

The Enterprise System can be modeled at 4 interconnected layers:

-   -   Physical Infrastructure    -   Virtual Infrastructure    -   Software Landscape, corresponding to software entities such as        the above mentioned application elements    -   Business Processes

This model is called the Enterprise System Model. At each layer, itconsists of two sets of models—the Automation Model and the DocumentModel.

-   -   The Automation Model describes the structure and behaviour of        the System, and is used to automatically generate, evaluate,        deploy, and modify designs for Enterprise Systems. Monitored        data from the deployed physical system at each of the 4 layers        can be correlated with modeled behaviour and used to make        run-time management decisions based on actual measurements.

The Automation Model is composed of two sub-models—the Static Model andan Operational Model. The Static Model describes the static structure ofthe system—the selection and configuration options of candidate designsof the Enterprise System. The Operational Model describes the internalstructure, run-time operation, and performance demands (such as CPU,memory, disk, or network I/O) of the infrastructure and software. It isthese Operational Models that allow simulation and evaluation of howwell a candidate design will meet the non-functional requirements of theSystem.

-   -   The Document Model contains information that can be extracted        and transformed into a valuable source of documentation of the        System. The information that contributes to the Document Model        may be closely associated with entities in the Automation Model.        This documentation can be used by humans to understand and        inspect the structure and operational behaviour of the system,        both for functional correctness but also for non-functional        behaviour such as performance. The documentation may also be        used for training and educational purposes. Examples of        documentation include:    -   UML diagrams of Business Process steps.    -   Descriptions of the function of Business Objects, their        interfaces, and side effects.    -   UML diagrams of internal static structure of Software        Applications, in terms of the constituent software components.    -   Activity diagrams of the interactions between software        components.

The output from Monitoring and Reporting Services could also beclassified as a special case of the Document Model, describing therun-time behaviour and performance of the system in human-readable form.Enterprise Systems are very complex, and the Models underlying themodeling techniques are correspondingly complex and difficult to create.The Models may change over time as systems are modified, patched andredesigned. Additionally, the models may depend on the actual data andconfiguration contained within a specific System and the observedbehaviour of a running system.

In general, much of the detailed structure and parameters of therequired models are too complex and dynamic for human beings to generateby hand in a timely fashion. The problem addressed by this invention ishow to automatically generate, at least parts of, the Automation andDocument Models. The information in the models must be consistent andcorrelated—activity in one part of the system must be traceable andcorrelated with related activities. For example, an activity A mayresult in a cascade of other activities B, C and D; it is desirable thatthese relationships can be represented at run-time and captured in themodels.

Model-Based technologies to automatically design and manage EnterpriseSystems—see “Adaptive Infrastructure meets Adaptive Applications”, byBrand et al, published as an external HP Labs Tech Report:

http://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/2007/HPL-2007-138.htmland incorporated herein by reference, can provide the capability toautomatically design, deploy, modify, monitor, and manage a runningSystem to implement a business process, while minimizing the requirementfor human involvement.

The embodiments are concerned with providing a mechanism toautomatically generate key aspects of the required Automation Models ofan Enterprise System, together with additional Document Models to beused by humans to understand and analyse the system.

Embodiments are concerned with configuring an enterprise applicationsolution for an enterprise application computing appliance. This caninvolve accepting a customized description for an enterprise applicationsystem and deploying it to hardware (also called an appliance). Theappliance can in some cases be specially designed using virtualizationfeatures to enable ongoing and remote management for the enterpriseapplication and appliance and be tested for performance to verify thatservice levels requested are met. The appliance may operate on anenterprise premises or at an ISP of the enterprise's choosing forexample. Enterprises want to have a choice whether to operate enterpriseapplications in shared environments or within an enterprise applicationappliance that operates at a location of their choice.

This approach provides choice for enterprises which want enterpriseapplications but prefer to outsource management, i.e., remote managementcoupled with on-site maintenance when necessary. Vendors providing anapplication appliance need to offer the right amount of capacity, toomuch or too little causes extra costs, the risk may prohibit the successof enterprise application appliances. An enterprise appliance that isverified to support the non-functional requirements of enterprises priorto delivery can lead to greater enterprise trust.

The use of virtualized infrastructure, e.g., with virtual machinemigration, better support remote maintenance e.g., new hardware can beintroduced and virtual machines migrated to it without shutting down theapplication e.g., new versions of software can be deployed and tested inthe appliance prior to any upgrade of the operational software.Automatically deploying management services with enterprise applicationservices can better enable consistent remote management and facilitateon-site maintenance when necessary.

Such model based configuration compares well to configuration done byhand, which can lead to differences in enterprise applicationenvironments which increases the complexity of remote management.

Infrastructure deployed by hand rather than being automated can mean thesizing method for particular parts of infrastructure, is ad hoc,increasing the risk of an incorrect amount of capacity in an appliance.Currently service providers only offer hosting in a shared environmenteven if an enterprise wants to operate an enterprise applicationappliance locally or in some other facility.

Some advantages which can arise include the following:

A customized solution can be provided via automation technologies ratherthan via scarce skilled human consultants. Enterprises can hostsolutions locally or at any location they desire thereby reducingdependency on wide area networks and application service providers. Acombination of enterprise application services from multiple vendors canbe provided on a single appliance. A combination or remote and on-siteservicing can reduce the in house skills needed by enterprises to hosttheir services locally. A single enterprise appliance places a lessconcentrated power and cooling burden on the public power grid than alarge data center.

EXAMPLE Operation of an Embodiment

A: Enterprise specifies requirements for system.B: Design appropriate infrastructure to support the system and itsmanagement.C: Render the infrastructure to an enterprise application appliance &deploy the enterprise and management services.D: Affirm non-functional requirements are satisfied via testing.E: Ship the enterprise appliance to enterprise.F: Enterprise connects appliance to networks for use by users & forremote management.G: Continuously apply remote and on-site management as appropriate, andimplement changes in Enterprise requirements.

Step A: An enterprise uses one or more configuration tools to specifyand configure a legal combination of enterprise application services.The enterprise application services may be offered by enterpriseapplication service vendors, ISVs, (Internet Service Vendors) or becustomizations that are tolerated by the overall framework presented inthis application.

Configuration tools may be offered by enterprise application softwarevendors or ISVs and/or the enterprise application provider

Step B: designing a virtualized infrastructure for the enterpriseapplication that can be hosted on an enterprise application appliance.Enterprise specifies non-functional requirements for the system and/orits services

-   -   E.g., performance, security, reliability, maintainability.

Design service recommends a configuration for an infrastructure designthat supports the non-functional requirements for a particularenterprise application appliance. Infrastructure design includes supportfor firewalls, web servers, application servers, database servers, otherkinds of servers, additional management software, hardware to supportmaintenance (i.e., roll over to a new version of software), it mayinclude multiple servers and networking support.

Step C: render the application and management services to thevirtualized infrastructure. A virtualized infrastructure is rendered toenterprise dedicated hardware in the form of an appropriately sizedapplication appliance. This can be any size as appropriate to the needsof the business process, and in a typical example is a server or a rackof servers. Enterprise application and management services such as theremote management interface to the service provider are deployed to theinfrastructure on the appliance.

Step D: validation tests are conducted to affirm support fornon-functional requirements. Tests are conducted to ensure that eachnon-functional requirement is satisfied. If appropriate, tuningmechanisms are used to enable satisfaction of the requirements.

Step E: ship a configured appliance to an enterprise's desired locationfor the enterprise application appliance. The configured appliance isshipped to the enterprise's desired location for the enterpriseapplication appliance. The location may be at the enterprise's site, ata hosting site chosen by the enterprise etc., it is any location deemedjointly acceptable to the enterprise and to the enterprise applicationappliance provider.

Step F: Enterprise need only turn on the appliance and connect it tonetworks for use by users. In all cases remote management servicesmanagement and maintain the enterprise application appliance. In otherembodiments the appliance is shipped first and configured remotely.

Step G: ongoing remote management/maintenance for the enterpriseapplication and appliance. Remote maintenance can include support for:

-   -   Hardware and software failures    -   Software and hardware upgrades and additions    -   Security    -   Capacity planning    -   Database maintenance    -   Recognizing when on-site maintenance is needed and scheduling it        On-site maintenance can include support for:    -   Hardware failure management and hardware upgrades    -   Services not successfully accomplished remotely

The enterprise may change the requirements for the system,—E.g.,adding/removing services that are supported by the enterpriseapplication appliance or modifying non-functional requirements. Theimpact of these changes is evaluated by remote management services and acombination or remote and, if required, on-site management actions areperformed to implement the changes.

FIGS. 16 to 21, Embodiments of the Invention

FIG. 16 shows some of the principal parts of an embodiment of theinvention. It shows enterprise side items on the left side and serviceprovider side items on the right side. An enterprise interface 710 isused to pass non functional requirements and functional steps of thedesired business process to the service provider side. Here a modelgeneration part 720 generates a model 730 of the business process. Thiscan be stored at either the enterprise side or the service providerside. It may have a layered structure with an arrangement of softwareapplication components for implementing the functional steps, and adesign of computing infrastructure for miming the software applicationcomponents to meet the non functional requirements. More details of animplementation of the model generation part are shown below withreference to a model information flow and FIGS. 1 to 15. There is alsoshown in FIG. 16 a deployment part 740, located either at the enterpriseor the service provider side. This creates a deployed business process750 formed of the deployed modeled software application components andcomputing infrastructure. This is formed on enterprise dedicatedhardware 770. Monitored data from the deployed business system can befed back to a remote management services part 700. Management services712 are provided in the service provider side to communicate with theenterprise side via the corresponding remote management services part700. This provides an interface to enable the service provider to managethe activities at the enterprise side. The service provider side partsare typically software parts running on hardware in the form of shareddata centre resources 780.

As shown in FIG. 17, an example of steps of the system of FIG. 16 inoperation starts with receiving the inputs from the enterprise at step805. This can include non functional requirements, and other items suchas functional steps of the business process (or a choice ofpredetermined steps from a catalog for example), and a service levelagreement if needed. At step 815 a model of software applicationcomponents to implement the functional steps is generated by the modelgeneration part. This can be implemented in various ways, and example isdescribed in more detail with reference to FIGS. 1 to 15 below.

At step 825, a model of computing infrastructure for use in running thesoftware application components is generated. This can be physicalinfrastructure, virtualised infrastructure, or commonly a mixture ofboth, some of the physical infrastructure for running the components andsome for hosting the virtualised infrastructure. All is designed to meetthe non functional requirements. The design may be semi automated in thesense of having an operator make decisions but being prompted and guidedby design service software, such as the design template approachdescribed in more detail below. At step 835, the enterprise dedicatedhardware is set up to match the requirements of the model. At step 845the model is deployed on physical infrastructure, complete with aninterface to the service provider. This helps enable ongoing managementof the deployed process, provided at step 855.

FIG. 18 shows steps according to another embodiment, with testing. Atstep 800 a model is generated according to functional steps and nonfunctional requirements. A specification of the dedicated hardware ispreferably generated and output at step 810. The hardware is set up fortesting, according to the specification at step 820. The model isdeployed on the dedicated hardware at step 830. It can be tested toverify it meets the non functional requirements at step 840. Thededicated hardware can be at the service provider's location fortesting. If so, it after testing, having the business process deployedon it, it can be moved to the enterprise's chosen location at step 850.There, remote management should be set up at step 860, and the businessprocess can be activated at step 870.

FIG. 19 shows steps according to another embodiment, for existingdedicated hardware. At step 900 a model is generated according tofunctional steps and non functional requirements, and according tolimitations of existing enterprise dedicated hardware. The model isdeployed on the existing dedicated hardware at step 910. Remotemanagement can be set up at step 920. It can be tested to verify itmeets the non functional requirements using the remote management part,at step 930. At step 940, the Enterprise proposes changes to functionalsteps or non functional requirements. These are passed to the modelgeneration part. The service provider uses this part to generate arevised model with revisions to infrastructure design or softwareapplication components, to implement the proposed changes. A testdeployment can be carried out at the data center at step 970, and theremote management parts be used to send the revisions and deploy them atstep 972.

FIG. 20 shows another embodiment showing actions of an update part,which can be one part of the remote management services. For changesprompted by any party such as the enterprise, a software supplier, orthe service provider, the update part determines which modeled entitiesshould be revised at step 975. This can be parts in lower layers orhigher layers of the model. The changes can be during development orduring ongoing management of a live process. The update part creates atest environment either at the enterprise or at the service providerlocation. Possible ways of setting up test environments are shown inmore detail in the above referenced copending cases '2145 and '2601. Theupdate part generates at step 985 a test deployment of changes in thetest environment, according to the infrastructure design template. Ifthe changes are verified as allowable, meeting template requirements,the update part will cause the changes to be implemented at step 987.

FIG. 21 shows another embodiment similar to that of FIG. 16. Similarreference numerals have been used as appropriate. In addition, someparts are located at an ISP (Internet Service Provider) local to theenterprise. In this view the parts located at the ISP are shown in thecenter of the figure. The enterprise interface is still at theenterprise. The remote management services, the model generation part,the model store, and the deployment part are located at the ISP, thoughthey could be located elsewhere such as at the service providerlocation. The enterprise dedicated hardware is part of the ISP hardware771. So the deployed business process 750 formed of the deployed modeledsoftware application components and computing infrastructure is formedon the ISP hardware 771. Also shown here is a test environment 717, atthe service provider's location so that ISP resources are not occupiedby it.

Source Content

The software of an enterprise application can be described by variouskinds of Source Content. Typically the Source Content is owned by theenterprise application Vendor, who would also be responsible for addingthe Model-Markup annotations. There may be several forms of SourceContent such as:

-   -   Program Code written in languages such as Java, or ABAP. This        code may be created directly by humans, or automatically        generated from other Program Models or tools.    -   Program Models describe an aspect of the system, such as its        static structure, or run-time behaviour. Program Models are        themselves expressed in some form of mark-up language, such as        XML. Examples might be:    -   State and Action diagrams for the behaviour of software        components.    -   Business Process diagrams describing the set of business process        steps.    -   Structure diagrams describing the static packaging of the        software into deployable units, executables and products.

Program Code or Program Models may be generated via tools, such asgraphical editors, or directly by humans. The syntax and language usedto describe Source Content may vary widely.

Model Information Flow

The resulting computational model can be used to automate thesimulation, evaluation, and design of the system.

More details of an example of using a series of models for such purposeswill now be described. If starting from scratch, a business process isdesigned using a business process modeling tool. The business process isselected from a catalog of available business processes and iscustomized by the business process modeling tool. An available businessprocess is one that can be built and run. There will be correspondingtemplates for these as described below. Then non-functionalcharacteristics such as reliability and performance requirements arespecified.

Next the software entities such as products and components required toimplement the business process are selected. This is done typically bysearching through a catalog of product models in which the model foreach product specifies what business process is implemented. This modelis provided by an application expert or the product vendor.

Next the computing infrastructure such as virtual machines, operatingsystems, and underlying hardware, is designed. This can use templates asdescribed in more detail below, and in above referenced previously filedapplication Ser. No. 11/741,878 “Using templates in automatedmodel-based system design” incorporated herein by reference. A templateis a model that has parameters and options, by filling in the parametersand selecting options a design tool transforms the template into acomplete model of a deployable system. This application shows a methodof modeling a business process having a number of computer implementedsteps using software application components, to enable automaticdeployment on a computing infrastructure, the method having the stepsof:

automatically deriving a grounded model of the business process from anunbound model of the business process, the unbound model specifying theapplication components to be used for each of the computer implementedsteps of the business process, without a complete design of thecomputing infrastructure, and the grounded model specifying a completedesign of the computing infrastructure suitable for automatic deploymentof the business process,

the deriving of the grounded model having the steps of providing aninfrastructure design template having predetermined parts of thecomputing infrastructure, predetermined relationships between the parts,and having a limited number of options to be completed, generating acandidate grounded model by generating a completed candidateinfrastructure design based on the infrastructure design template, andgenerating a candidate configuration of the software applicationcomponents used by the unbound model, and evaluating the candidategrounded model, to determine if it can be used as the grounded model.

Next the physical resources from the shared resource pool in the datacenter are identified and allocated. Finally the physical resources areconfigured and deployed and ongoing management of the system can becarried out.

All of this can use SAP R/3 as an example, but is also applicable toother SAP systems or non-SAP systems. Template technology as describedbelow can include not only the components needed to implement thebusiness process and the management components required to manage thatbusiness process, but also designs for computing infrastructure.

The model generation part can be implemented in various ways. One way isbased on a six stage model flow called the Model Information Flow (MIF).This involves the model being developed in stages or phases whichcapture the lifecycle of the process from business requirements all theway to a complete running system. The six phases are shown in FIG. 4described below and each has a corresponding type of model which can besummarised as follows:

-   -   General Model: The starting point, for example a high level        description of business steps based on “out-of-the-box”        functionalities of software packages the user can choose from,        and the generic business processes and their constituent        business process steps.    -   Custom Process Model: defined above and for example a        specialization of the previous model (General Model) with        choices made by the enterprise. This model captures        non-functional requirements such as response time, throughput        and levels of security. Additionally, it specifies modifications        to the generic business processes for the enterprise.        Additionally, it can specify modifications to the generic        business processes for the enterprise.    -   Unbound Model: defined above, and for example an abstract        logical description of the structure and behaviour of a system        capable of running the business process with the requirements as        specified by the enterprise.    -   Grounded Model: defined above and for example can be a        transformation of the previous model (Unbound Model) to specify        infrastructure choices, such as the quantities and types of        hardware and virtualization techniques to use, and also the        structure and configuration of the software to run the business        process.    -   Bound Model: a grounded model for which resources in the data        centre have been reserved.    -   Deployed Model: a grounded model where the infrastructure and        the software components have been deployed and configured. At        this point, the service is up and running.

Each stage of the flow has corresponding types of model which are storedin a Model Repository. Management services consume the models providedby the Model Repository and execute management actions to realize thetransitions between phases, to generate the next model in the MIF. Thoseservices can be for example:

-   -   Template-based Design Service (TDS) (and an example of a model        based design service): translates non-functional requirements        into design choices for a Grounded Model based on the template.    -   Resource Acquisition Service (RAS): its purpose is to allocate        physical resources prior to the deployment of virtual resources,        such as vms.    -   Resource Configuration Service (RCS): its role is to        create/update the virtual infrastructure.    -   Software Deployment Service (SDS): installs and configures the        applications needed to run the business processes, and        potentially other software.    -   Monitoring Services (MS) deploys Probes to monitor behaviour of        a Deployed Model. This can include monitoring at any one or more        of these three levels:        -   Infrastructure: e.g. to monitor CPU, RAM, network I/O usage            regardless of which application or functional step is            executing.        -   Application: e.g. to monitor time taken or CPU consumption            of a given application such as a DB process on the operating            system, regardless of which particular infrastructure            component is used.        -   Business process: e.g. count the number of sales order per            hour, regardless of which infrastructure components or            applications are used.

Templates for the Computing Infrastructure Design

Templates are used to capture designs that are known to instantiatesuccessfully (using the management services mentioned above). An exampleof template describes a SAP module running on a Linux virtual machine(vm) with a certain amount of memory. The templates also capturemanagement operations that it is known can be executed, for instancemigration of vm of a certain kind, increasing the memory of a vm,deploying additional application server to respond to high load, etc . .. If a change management service refers to the templates, then thetemplates can be used to restrict the types of change (deltas) that canbe applied to the models.

Templates sometimes have been used in specific tools to restrictchoices. Another approach is to use constraints which provide the tooland user more freedom. In this approach constraints or rules arespecified that the solution must satisfy. One example might be thatthere has to be at least one application server and at least onedatabase in the application configuration. These constraints on theirown do not reduce the complexity sufficiently for typical businessprocesses, because if there are few constraints, then there are a largenumber of possible designs (also called a large solution space). Ifthere are a large number of constraints (needed to characterize asolution), then searching and resolving all the constraints is reallyhard—a huge solution space to explore. Also it will take a long time tofind which of the constraints invalidates a given possible design fromthe large list of constraints.

Templates might also contain instructions for managing change. Forexample they can contain reconfiguration instructions that need to beissued to the application components to add a new virtual machine with anew slave application server.

The deriving of the grounded model can involve specifying all serversneeded for the application components. This is part of the design of theadaptive infrastructure and one of the principal determinants ofperformance of the deployed business process. The template may limit thenumber or type of servers, to reduce the number of options, to reducecomplexity of finding an optimised solution for example.

The deriving of the grounded model from the unbound model can involvespecifying a mapping of each of the application components to a server.This is part of configuring the application components to suit thedesign of adaptive infrastructure. The template may limit the range ofpossible mappings, to reduce the number of options, to reduce complexityof finding an optimised solution for example.

The deriving of the grounded model from the Unbound Model can involvespecifying a configuration of management infrastructure for monitoringof the deployed business process in use. This monitoring can be at oneor more different levels, such as monitoring the software applicationcomponents, or the underlying adaptive infrastructure, such as softwareoperating systems, or processing hardware, storage or communications.

More than one grounded model can be derived, each for deployment of thesame business process at different times. This can enable more efficientuse of resources for business processes which have time varying demandfor those resources for example. Which of the grounded models isdeployed at a given time can be switched over any time duration, such ashourly, daily, nightly, weekly, monthly, seasonally and so on. Theswitching can be at predetermined times, or switching can be arrangedaccording to monitored demand, detected changes in resources, such ashardware failures or any other factor.

Where the computing infrastructure has virtualized entities, thederiving of the grounded model can be arranged to specify one or morevirtualized entities without indicating how the virtualised entities arehosted. It has now been appreciated that the models and the deriving ofthem can be simplified by hiding such hosting, since the hosting caninvolve arbitrary recursion, in the sense of a virtual entity beinghosted by another virtual entity, itself hosted by another virtualentity and so on. The template can specify virtual entities, and mapapplication components to such virtual entities, to limit the number ofoptions to be selected, again to reduce complexity. Such templates willbe simpler if they do not need to specify the hosting of the virtualentities. The hosting can be defined at some time before deployment, bya separate resource allocation service for example.

The grounded model can be converted to a bound model, by reservingresources in the adaptive infrastructure for deploying the bound model.At this point, the amount of resources needed is known, so it can bemore efficient to reserve resources at this time than reserving earlier,though other possibilities can be conceived. If the grounded model isfor a change in an existing deployment, the method can have the step ofdetermining differences to the existing deployed model, and reservingonly the additional resources needed.

The bound model can be deployed by installing and starting theapplication components of the bound model. This enables the businessprocess to be used. If the grounded model is for a change in an existingdeployment, the differences to the existing deployed model can bedetermined, and only the additional application components need beinstalled and started.

Two notable points in the modeling philosophy are the use of templatesto present a finite catalogue of resources that can be instantiated, andnot exposing the hosting relationship for virtualized resources. Eitheror both can help reduce the complexity of the models and thus enablemore efficient processing of the models for deployment or changing afterdeployment.

Some embodiments can use an infrastructure capability model to presentthe possible types of resources that can be provided by a computingfabric. An instance of an infrastructure capability model contains oneinstance for each type of Computer System or Device that can be deployedand configured by the underlying utility computing fabric. Each time theutility deploys and configures one of these types, the configurationwill always be the same. For a Computer System this can mean thefollowing for example.

Same memory, CPU, Operating System

Same number of NICs with same I/O capacity

Same number of disks with the same characteristics

The templates can map the application components to computers, while therange of both application components and computers is allowed to vary.In addition the templates can also include some or all of the networkdesign, including for example whether firewalls and subnets separate thecomputers in the solution. In embodiments described below in moredetail, the Application Packaging Model together with the Custom ProcessModel show how the various application components can implement thebusiness process, and are packaged within the Grounded Model.

The template selected can also be used to limit changes to the system,such as changes to the business process, changes to the applicationcomponents, or changes to the infrastructure, or consequential changesfrom any of these. This can make the ongoing management of the adaptiveinfrastructure a more tractable computing problem, and therefore allowmore automation and thus reduced costs. In some example templatescertain properties have a range: for example 0 to n, or 2 to n. A changemanagement tool (or wizard, or set of tools or wizards) only allowschanges to be made to the system that are consistent with template. Thetemplate is used by this change management tool to compute the set ofallowable changes, it only permits allowable changes. This can helpavoid the above mentioned difficulties in computing differences betweenmodels of current and next state, if there are no templates to limit theotherwise almost infinite numbers of possible configurations.

Some of the advantages or consequences of these features are as follows:

1. Simplicity: by using templates it becomes computationally tractableto build a linked tool set to integrate business process, applicationand infrastructure design and management through the entire lifecycle ofdesign, deployment and change.

2. By limiting the number of possible configurations of the adaptiveinfrastructure, the particular computing problem of having to computethe differences between earlier and later states of complex models iseased or avoided. This can help enable a management system for theadaptive infrastructure which can determine automatically how to evolvethe system from an arbitrary existing state to an arbitrary desiredchanged state. Instead templates fix the set of allowable changes andare used as configuration for a change management tool.

3. The template models formally relate the business process, applicationcomponents and infrastructure design. This means that designs, orchanges, to any one of these can be made dependent on the others forexample, so that designs or changes which are inconsistent with theothers are avoided.

FIG. 1 Overview

FIG. 1 shows an overview of infrastructure, applications, and managementtools and models according to an embodiment. Adaptive infrastructure 280is coupled typically over the internet to customers 290, optionally viaa business process BP call centre 300. A management system 210 has toolsand services for managing design and deployment and ongoing changes todeployed business processes, using a number of models. For example asshown, the management system has initial design tools 211, design changetools 213, deployment tools 215, and monitoring and management tools217. These may be in the form of software tools running on conventionalprocessing hardware, which may be distributed. Examples of initialdesign tools and design change tools are shown by the servicesillustrated in FIG. 5 described below.

A high level schematic view of some of the models are shown, for twobusiness processes, there can be many more. Typically the managementsystem belongs to a service provider, contracted to provide IT servicesto businesses who control their own business processes for theircustomers. A model 230 of business process 1 is used to develop a design250 of software application components. This is used to create andinfrastructure design 270 for running the application components toimplement the business process. This design can then be deployed by themanagement system to run on the actual adaptive infrastructure, where itcan be used for example by customers, a call centre and suppliers (notshown for clarity). Similarly, item 220 shows a model of a secondbusiness process, used to develop a design 240 of software applicationcomponents. This is used to create and infrastructure design 260 forrunning the application components to implement the second businessprocess. This design can then also be deployed by the management systemto run on the actual adaptive infrastructure.

The management system has a visual interface to an infrastructuremanagement operator 200, possibly with a 3D visual representation, asdescribed in the corresponding copending application referenced above.This operator can be service provider staff, or in some cases can betrained staff of the business owning the process. The service providerstaff may be able to view and manage the processes of differentbusinesses deployed on the shared infrastructure. The operators of agiven enterprise would be able to view and manage only their ownprocesses. As discussed above, the interface can be coupled to themanagement system 210 to enable the operator to be able to interact withthe various types of models, and with the infrastructure designtemplate.

The adaptive infrastructure can include management infrastructure 283,for coupling to the monitoring and management tools 217 of themanagement system. The models need not be held all together in a singlerepository, in principle they can be stored anywhere.

FIG. 2 Operation

FIG. 2 shows a schematic view of some operation steps by an operator andby the management system, according to an embodiment. Human operatoractions are shown in a left hand column, and actions of the managementsystem are shown in the right hand column. At step 500 the humanoperator designs and inputs a business process (BP). At step 510 themanagement system creates an unbound model of the BP. At step 520, theoperator selects a template for the design of the computinginfrastructure. At step 530, the system uses the selected template tocreate a grounded model of the BP from the unbound model and theselected template. In principle the selection of the template might beautomated or guided by the system. The human operator of the serviceprovider then causes the grounded model to be deployed, either as a livebusiness process with real customers, or as a test deployment undercontrolled or simulated conditions. The suitability of the groundedmodel can be evaluated before being deployed as a live business process,an example of how to do this is described below with reference to FIG.3.

At step 550, the system deploys the grounded model of the BP in theadaptive infrastructure. The deployed BP is monitored by a monitoringmeans of any type, and monitoring results are passed to the humanoperator. Following review of the monitoring results at step 570, theoperator of the enterprise can design changes to the BP or the operatorof the service provider can design changes to the infrastructure at step575. These are input to the system, and at step 580 the system decidesif changes are allowed by the same template. If no, at step 585, theoperator decides either for a new template, involving a return to step520, or for a redesign within the limitations of the same template,involving at step 587 the system creating a grounded model of thechanges, based on the same template.

At step 590 the operator of the service provider causes deployment ofthe grounded model for test or live deployment. At step 595 the systemdeploys the grounded model of the changes. In principle the changescould be derived later, by generating a complete grounded model, andlater determining the differences, but this is likely to be moredifficult.

FIG. 3 Operation

FIG. 3 shows an overview of an embodiment showing some of the steps andmodels involved in taking a business process to automated deployment.These steps can be carried out by the management system of FIG. 1, orcan be used in other embodiments.

A business process model 15 has a specification of steps 1-N. There canbe many loops and conditional branches for example as is well known. Itcan be a mixture of human and computer implemented steps, the humaninput being by customers or suppliers or third parties for example. Atstep 65, application components are specified for each of the computerimplemented steps of the business process. At step 75, a complete designof computing infrastructure is specified automatically, based on anunbound model 25. This can involve at step 85 taking an infrastructuredesign template 35, and selecting options allowed by the template tocreate a candidate infrastructure design. This can include design ofsoftware and hardware parts. At step 95, a candidate configuration ofsoftware application components allowed by the template is created, tofit the candidate infrastructure design. Together these form a candidategrounded model.

At step 105, the candidate grounded model is evaluated. If necessary,further candidate grounded models are created and evaluated. Which ofthe candidates is a best fit to the requirements of the business processand the available resources is identified. There are many possible waysof evaluating, and many possible criteria, which can be arranged to suitthe type of business process. The criteria can be incorporated in theunbound model for example.

There can be several grounded models each for different times ordifferent conditions. For example, time varying non-functionalrequirements can lead to different physical resources or even areconfiguration: a VM might have memory removed out-of-office hoursbecause fewer people will be using it. One might even shutdown anunderused slave application server VM. The different grounded modelswould usually but not necessarily come from the same template withdifferent parameters being applied to generate the different groundedmodels.

The template, grounded and subsequent models can contain configurationinformation for management infrastructure and instructions for themanagement infrastructure, for monitoring the business process whendeployed. An example is placing monitors in each newly deployed virtualmachine which raise alarms when the CPU utilization rises above acertain level—e.g. 60%.

FIG. 4 MIF

FIG. 4 shows some of the principal elements of the MIF involved in thetransition from a custom model to a deployed instance. For simplicity,it does not show the many cycles and iterations that would be involvedin a typical application lifecycle—these can be assumed. The generalmodel 15 of the business process is the starting point and it is assumedthat a customer or consultant has designed a customized businessprocess. That can be represented in various ways, so a preliminary stepin many embodiments is customising it. A custom model 18 is acustomization of a general model. So it is likely that a General Modelcould be modeled using techniques similar to the ones demonstrated formodeling the Custom Model: there would be different business processsteps. A custom model differs from the general model in the followingrespects. It will include non-functional requirements such as number ofusers, response time, security and availability requirements. Inaddition it can optionally involve rearranging the business processsteps: new branches, new loops, new steps, different/replacement steps,steps involving legacy or external systems.

The custom model is converted to an unbound model 25 with inputs such asapplication performance 31, application packaging 21, and applicationconstraints 27. The unbound model can specify at least the applicationcomponents to be used for each of the computer implemented steps of thebusiness process, without a complete design of the computinginfrastructure. The unbound model is converted to a grounded model 55with input from models of infrastructure capability 33, and aninfrastructure design template 35.

Deployment of the grounded model can involve conversion to a bound model57, then conversion of the bound model to a deployed model 63. The boundmodel can have resources reserved, and the deployed model involves theapplications being installed and started.

FIG. 5 MIF

FIG. 5 shows a sequence of steps and models according to anotherembodiment. This shows a model repository 310 which can have models suchas templates (TMP), an unbound model (UM), a bound model (BM), apartially deployed model (PDM), a fully deployed model (FDM). The figurealso shows various services such as a service 320 for generating agrounded model from an unbound model using a template. Another serviceis a resource acquisition service 330 for reserving resources using aresources directory 340, to create a bound model.

An adaptive infrastructure management service 350 can configure andignite virtual machines in the adaptive infrastructure 280, according tothe bound model, to create a partially deployed model. Finally asoftware deployment service 360 can be used to take a partially deployedmodel and install and start application components to start the businessprocess, and create a fully deployed model.

FIG. 6 Deriving Grounded Model

FIG. 6 shows steps in deriving a grounded model according to anembodiment. At step 400, a template is selected from examples such ascentralised or decentralised arrangements. A centralised arrangementimplies all is hosted on a single server or virtual server. Othertemplate choices may be for example high or low security, depending forexample on what firewalls or other security features are provided. Othertemplate choices may be for example high or low availability, which canimply redundancy being provided for some or all parts.

At step 410, remaining options in the selected template are filled in.This can involve selecting for example disk sizes, numbers of dialogprocesses, number of servers, server memory, network bandwidth, servermemory, network bandwidth, database time allowed and so on. At step 420,a candidate grounded model is created by the selections. Step 430involves evaluating the candidate grounded model e.g. by building aqueuing network, with resources represented, and with sync pointsrepresenting processing delays, db delays and so on. Alternatively theevaluation can involve deploying the model in an isolated network withsimulated inputs and conditions.

At step 440, the evaluation or simulation results are compared withgoals for the unbound model. These can be performance goals such asmaximum number of simultaneous users with a given response time, ormaximum response time, for a given number of users. At step 450, anothercandidate grounded model can be created and tested with differentoptions allowed by the template. At step 460 the process is repeated forone or more different templates. At step 470, results are compared toidentify which candidate or candidates provides the best fit. More thanone grounded model may be selected, if for example the goals orrequirements are different at different times for example. In this case,the second or subsequent grounded model can be created in the form ofchanges to the first grounded model.

FIG. 7 Master and Slave Application Servers

FIG. 7 shows an arrangement of master and slave application servers fora decentralised or distributed design of computing infrastructure,according to an embodiment. A master application server 50 is providedcoupled by a network to a database 60, and to a number of slaveapplication servers 70. Some of the slaves can be implemented as virtualslave application servers 72. Each slave can have a number of dialogworker processes 80. The master application server is also coupled toremote users using client software 10. These can each have a graphicaluser interface GUI on a desktop PC 20 coupled over the internet forexample. The slaves can be used directly by the clients once the clientshave logged on using the master.

FIG. 8 Master Application Server

FIG. 8 shows parts of a master application server for the embodiment ofFIG. 7. An enqueue process 110 is provided to manage locks on thedatabase. A message server 120 is provided to manage login of users andassignment of users to slave application servers for example. An updateserver 130 is provided for managing committing work to persistentstorage in a database. A print server 140 can be provided if needed. Aspool server 150 can be provided to run batch tasks such as reports. At160 dialog worker processes are shown for running instances of theapplication components.

FIG. 9 Virtual Entities

FIG. 9 shows an arrangement of virtual entities on a server, for use inan embodiment. A hierarchy of virtual entities is shown. At an operatingsystem level there are many virtual machines VM. Some are hosted onother VMs. Some are hosted on virtual partitions VPARs 610 representinga reconfigurable partition of a hardware processing entity, for exampleby time sharing or by parallel processing circuitry. A number of thesemay be hosted by a hard partitioned entity nPAR 620 representing forexample a circuit board mounting a number of the hardware processingentities. Multiple nPARs make up a physical computer 630 which istypically coupled to a network by network interface 650, and coupled tostorage such as via a storage area network SAN interface 640.

There are many commercial storage virtualization products on the marketfrom HP, IBM, EMC and others. These products are focused on managing thestorage available to physical machines and increasing the utilization ofstorage. Virtual machine technology is a known mechanism to runoperating system instances on one physical machine independently ofother operating system instances. It is known, within a single physicalmachine, to have two virtual machines connected by a virtual network onthis machine. VMware is a known example of virtual machine technology,and can provide isolated environments for different operating systeminstances running on the same physical machine.

There are also many levels at which virtualization can occur. Forexample HP's cellular architecture allows a single physical computer tobe divided into a number of hard partitions or nPARs. Each nPAR appearsto the operating system and applications as a separate physical machine.Similarly each nPAR can be divided into a number of virtual parititionsor vPARs and each vPAR can be divided into a number of virtual machines(e.g. HPVM, Xen, VMware).

FIGS. 10 to 15

The next part of this document describes in more detail with referenceto FIGS. 10 to 15 examples of models that can be used within the ModelInformation Flow (MIF) shown in FIGS. 1 to 9, particularly FIG. 4. Thesemodels can be used to manage an SAP application or other businessprocess through its entire lifecycle within a utility infrastructure.The diagrams are shown using the well known UML (Unified ModelingLanguage) that uses a CIM (common information model) style. Theimplementation can be in Java or other software languages.

A custom model can have a 1-1 correspondence between an instance of anAIService and a BusinessProcess. The AIService is the informationservice that implements the business process.

A business process can be decomposed into a number of business processsteps (BPsteps), so instances of a BusinessProcess class can contain 1or more BPSteps. An instance of a BPStep may be broken into multiplesmaller BPSteps involving sequences, branches, recursions and loops forexample. Once the BusinessProcess step is decomposed into sufficientdetail, each of the lowest level BPSteps can be matched to anApplicationComponent. An ApplicationComponent is the program or functionthat implements the BPStep. For SAP, an example would be the SAPtransaction named VA01 in the SD (Sales and Distribution package) of SAPR/3 Enterprise. Another example could be a specific Web Service (runningin an Application Server).

BPStep can have stepType and stepParams fields to describe not onlyexecution and branching concepts like higher-level sequences of steps,but also the steps themselves. The stepType field is used to definesequential or parallel execution, loops, and if-then-else statements.The stepParams field is used to define associated data. For example, inthe case of a loop, the stepParams field can be the loop count or atermination criterion. The set of BPSteps essentially describes a graphof steps with various controls such as loops, if-then-else statements,branching probabilities, etc.

The relation BPStepsToApplicationComponentMapping is a complex mappingthat details how the BPStep is mapped to the ApplicationComponent. Itrepresents, in a condensed form, a potentially complex mix ofinvocations on an Application Component by the BPStep, such as thespecific dialog steps or functions invoked within theApplicationComponent or set of method calls on a Web Service, andprovided details of parameters, such as the average number of line itemsin a sales order.

A BPStep may have a set of non-functional requirements(NonFunctionalRequirements) associated with it: performance;availability, security and others. Availability and securityrequirements could be modeled by a string: “high”, “medium”, “low”.Performance requirements are specified in terms of for example a numberof registered users (NoUsersReq), numbers of concurrent users of thesystem, the response time in seconds and throughput requirement for thenumber of transactions per second. Many BPSteps may share the same setof non-functional requirements. A time function can be denoted by astring. This specifies when the non-functional requirements apply, sodifferent requirements can apply during office-hours to outside ofnormal office hours. Richer time varying functions are also possible tocapture end of months peaks and the like.

FIGS. 10, 11 Custom Model

For an example of a Custom Model the well-known Sales and Distribution(SD) Benchmark will be discussed. This is software produced by the wellknown German company SAP. It is part of the SAP R/3 system, which is acollection of software that performs standard business functions forcorporations, such as manufacturing, accounting, financial management,and human resources. The SAP R/3 system is a client server system ableto run on virtually any hardware/software platform and able to use manydifferent database management systems. For example it can use an IBMAS/400 server running operating system OS/400 using database system DB2;or a Sun Solaris (a dialect of Unix) using an Oracle database system; oran IBM PC running Windows NT using SQL Server.

SAP R/3 is designed to allow customers to choose their own set ofbusiness functions, and to customize to add new database entities or newfunctionality. The SD Benchmark simulates many concurrent users usingthe SD (Sales and Distribution) application to assess the performancecapabilities of hardware. For each user the interaction consists of 16separate steps (Dialog Steps) that are repeated over and over. The stepsand their mapping to SAP transactions are shown in FIG. 10. Atransaction here is an example of an Application Component. Eachtransaction is shown as a number of boxes in a row. A first box in eachrow represents a user invoking the transaction e.g. by typing /nva01 tostart transaction VA01. As shown in FIG. 10, transaction VA01 in the toprow involves the business process steps of invoking the create salesorder transaction, then filling order details, then saving the sold-toparty, and completing with the “back” function F3 which saves the data.

A next transaction VL01N is shown in the second row, and involves stepsas follows to create an outbound delivery. The transaction is invoked,shipping information is filled in, and saved. A next transaction VA03 isshown in the third row for displaying a customer sales order. Thisinvolves invoking the transaction, and filling subsequent documents. Afourth transaction is VL02N in the fourth row, for changing an outbounddelivery. After invoking this transaction, the next box shows saving theoutbound delivery. A next transaction shown in the fifth row is VA05,for listing sales orders. After invoking this transaction, the next boxshows prompting the user to fill in dates and then a third box showslisting sales orders for the given dates. Finally, in a sixth row, thetransaction VF01 is for creating a billing document, and shows filling aform and saving the filled form.

FIG. 11 shows an example of a custom model instance for the SDBenchmark. The top two boxes indicate that the business process“BPModel” contains one top level BPStep: “SD Benchmark”, withstepType=Sequence. Two lines are shown leading from this box, one to thenon-functional requirements associated with this top-level BPStep, andshown by the boxes at the left hand side. In this particular case onlyperformance requirements have been specified—one for 9 am-5 pm and theother for 5 pm-9 am. Other types of non-functional requirements notshown could include security or availability requirements for example.In each case the performance requirements such as number of users,number of concurrent users, response time required, and throughputrequired, can be specified as shown. These are only examples. otherrequirements can be specified to suit the type of business process. Abox representing the respective time function is coupled to eachperformance requirement box as shown. One indicates 9 am to 5 pm, andthe other indicates 5 pm to 9 am in this example.

On the right hand side a line leads from the SD Benchmark BPStep to thefunctional requirements shown as six BPSteps, with stepType=Step—one foreach SAP transaction shown in FIG. 10 (VA01, VL01N, etc). Forconvenience the name of the first dialog step for each transaction shownin FIG. 10 is used as the name of the corresponding BPStep shown in FIG.11 (“Create sales order”, “Create outbound delivery”, “Display customersales order”, “Change outbound delivery”, “List sales order”, and“Create delivery document”). For each of these steps theBPStepToApplicationComponentMapping relation specifies the details ofthe dialog steps involved. For example in the case of CreateSalesOrder,FIG. 10 shows that the BPStepToApplicationComponentMapping needs tospecify the following dialog steps are executed in order: “Create SalesOrder”, “Fill Order Details”, “Sold to Party” and “Back”. In addition itmight specify the number of line items needed for “Fill Order Details”.At the right hand side of the figure, each BP step is coupled to aninstance of its corresponding ApplicationComponent via the respectivemapping. So BPstep “Create Sales order” is coupled toApplicationComponent VA01, via mapping having ID:001. BPstep “Createoutbound delivery” is coupled to ApplicationComponent VL01N via mappinghaving 1D:002. BPstep “Display customer sales order” is coupled viamapping having ID:003 to ApplicationComponent VA03. BPstep “Changeoutbound delivery” is coupled via mapping having 1D:004 toApplicationComponent VL02N. BPstep “List sales order” is coupled viamapping having 1D:005 to ApplicationComponent VA05. BPstep “Createdelivery document” is coupled via mapping having 1D:006 toApplicationComponent VF01.

FIG. 12, The Unbound Model

The Unbound Model is used to calculate resource demands. As shown inFIG. 12 this model can be made up of four models: the Custom Model(labelled CustomizedProcessingModel), Application Packaging, ApplicationConstraints and Application Performance models, an example of each ofwhich will be described below (other than the Custom Model, an exampleof which has been described above with respect to FIG. 11). Otherarrangements can be envisaged. No new information is introduced that isnot already contained in these four models.

FIG. 12, Application Packaging Model

The Application Packaging Model describes the internal structure of thesoftware: what products are needed and what modules are required fromthe product. An ApplicationComponent can be contained in anApplicationModule. An ApplicationModule might correspond to a JAR (Javaarchive) file for an application server, or a table in a database. Inthe case of SAP it might be the module to be loaded from a specificproduct into an application server such as SD or FI (Financials). Theapplication packaging model can have a DiskFootPrint to indicate theamount of disk storage required by the ApplicationModule. In the case ofthe ApplicationComponent VA01 in FIG. 10, it is from SD with aDiskFootPrint of 2 MB for example.

One or more ApplicationModules are contained within a product. So forexample SAP R/3 Enterprise contains SD. ApplicationModules can bedependent on other ApplicationModules. For example the SD Code for theApplication Server depends on both the SD Data and the SD Executablecode being loaded into the database. The Application Packaging Modelshows the ApplicationExecutionComponent that executes anApplicationComponent. This could be a servlet running in an applicationserver or a web server. It could also be a thread of a specificcomponent or a process. In the case of SD's VAO1 transaction it is aDialog Work Process. When it executes, the ApplicationComponent mayindirectly use or invoke other Application-Components to run: a servletmay need to access a database process; SD transactions need to accessother ApplicationComponents such as the Enqueue Work Process and theUpdate Work Process, as well as the DatabaseApplicationExecutionComponent.

The ApplicationExecutionComponent can be contained by and executed inthe context of an ApplicationExecutionService (SAP application server)which loads or contains ApplicationModules (SD) and manages theexecution of ApplicationExecutionComponents (Dialog WP) which, in turn,execute the ApplicationComponent (VA01) to deliver a BPStep.

FIG. 12, Application Constraints Model

The Application Constraints Model expresses arbitrary constraints oncomponents in the Customized Process, Application Packaging andComponent Performance Models. These constraints are used by tools togenerate additional models as the MIF progresses from left to right.Examples of constraints include:

-   -   How to scale up an application server—what        ApplicationExecutionComponents are replicated and what are not.        For example, to scale up an SAP application server to deal with        more users one cannot simply replicate the first instance—the        master application server 50 of FIGS. 7 and 8, commonly known as        the Central Instance. Instead a subset of the components within        the Central Instance is needed. This is also an example of        design practice, there may be other constraints encoding best        design practice.    -   Installation and configuration information for        ApplicationComponents, ApplicationExecutionComponents and        ApplicationExecutionServices    -   Performance constraints on ApplicationExecutionServices—e.g. do        not run an application server on a machine with greater than 60%        CPU utilization Other examples of constraints include ordering:        the database needs to be started before the application server.        Further constraints might be used to encode deployment and        configuration information. The constraints can be contained all        in the templates, or provided in addition to the templates, to        further limit the number of options for the grounded model.

FIG. 12, Application Performance Model

The purpose of the Application Performance Model is to define theresource demands for each BPStep. There are two types of resource demandto consider.

-   -   1. The demand for resources generated directly by the        ApplicationExecutionComponent (e.g. Dialog WP) using CPU,        storage I/O, network I/O and memory when it executes the        BPStep—the ComponentResourceDemand    -   2. The demand for resources generated by components that the        above ApplicationExecutionComponent causes when it uses, calls        or invokes other components (e.g. a Dialog WP using an Update        WP)—the IndirectComponentResourceDemand

The IndirectComponentResourceDemand is recursive. So there will be atree like a call-graph or activity-graph.

A complete Application Performance Model would contain similarinformation for all the BPSteps shown in FIG. 11. For example the set ofdialog steps in the BPStep “Create Sales Order” might consume 0.2 SAPS.Further it consists of 4 separate invocations (or in SAP terminologyDialog Steps). The calls are synchronous.

The following are some examples of attributes that can appear inIndirectComponentResourceDemands and ComponentResourceDemands.

-   -   delayProperties: Any delay (e.g. wait or sleep) associated with        the component's activity which does not consume any CPU,        NetIOProperties and DiskIOProperties.    -   NumInvocation: The number of times the component is called        during the execution of the BPStep.    -   InvocationType: synchronous if the caller is blocked;        asynchronous if the caller can immediately continue activity.    -   BPStepToAppCompID: This is the ID attribute of the        BPStepToApplicationComponentMapping. The reason for this is that        a particular ApplicationExecutionComponent is likely to be        involved in several different BPSteps.    -   ApplicationEntryPoint: This is the program or function being        executed. In the case of “Create Sales Order” this VA01 for the        DialogWP. It could also be a method of a Web Service.        CPUProperties can be expressed in SAPs or in other units. There        are various ways to express MemProperties, NetIOProperties and        DiskIOProperties.

FIG. 12, Component Performance Model

There is one instance of an Application Performance Model for eachinstance of a Custom Model. This is because, in the general case, eachbusiness process will have unique characteristics: a unique ordering ofBPSteps and/or a unique set of data characteristics for each BPStep. TheDirectComponentResourceDemands and IndirectComponentResourceDemandsassociations specify the unique resource demands for each BPStep. Thesedemands need to be calculated from known characteristics of eachApplicationComponent derived from benchmarks and also traces ofinstalled systems.

The Component Performance Model contains known performancecharacteristics of each ApplicationComponent. A specific ApplicationPerformance Model is calculated by combining the following:

-   -   The information contained in the        BPStepToApplicationComponentMapping associations in the Custom        Model    -   Any performance related constraints in the Application        Constraints Model    -   The Component Performance Model Taken together, the models of        the Unbound Model specify not only the non-functional        requirements of a system, but also a recipe for how to generate        and evaluate possible software and hardware configurations that        meet those requirements. The generation of possible hardware        configurations is constrained by the choice of infrastructure        available from a specific Infrastructure Provider, using        information in an Infrastructure Capability Model, and by the        selected template.

A general principle that applies to deployable software elementsdescribed in the Unbound Model, such as theApplicationExecutionComponent or ApplicationExecutionService, is thatthe model contains only the minimum number of instances of each type ofelement necessary to describe the structure of the application topology.For example, in the case of SD only a single instance of a Dialog WorkProcess ApplicationExecutionComponent associated with a single instanceof an Application Server ApplicationExecutionService is needed in theUnbound Model to describe the myriad of possible ways of instantiatingthe grounded equivalents of both elements in the Grounded Model. It isthe template and packaging information that determines exactly how theseentities can be replicated and co-located.

The Infrastructure Capability Model

As discussed above, two notable features of the modeling philosophydescribed are:

1. Present a template having a finite catalogue of resources that can beinstantiated, so that there are a fixed and finite number of choices.For example, small-xen-vm 1-disk, medium-xen-vm 2-disk, large-xen-vm3-disk, physical-hpux-machine etc. This makes the selection of resourcetype by any capacity planning tool simpler. It also makes theinfrastructure management easier as there is less complexity in resourceconfiguration—standard templates can be used.

2. Do not expose the hosting relationship for virtualized resources. TheDMTF Virtualization System Profile models hosting relationship as a“HostedDependency” association. This does not seem to be required ifthere is only a need to model a finite number of resource types, so itdoes not appear in any of the models discussed here. This keeps themodels simpler since there is no need to deal with arbitrary recursion.It does not mean that tools that process these models can't use the DMTFapproach internally if that is convenient. It may well be convenient fora Resource Directory Service and Resource Assignment Service to use thisrelationship in their internal models.

An instance of an infrastructure capability model contains one instancefor each type of ComputerSystem or Device that can be deployed andconfigured by the underlying utility computing fabric. Each time theutility deploys and configures one of these types the configuration willalways be the same. For a ComputerSystem this means the following.

-   -   Same memory, CPU, Operating System    -   Same number of NICs with same I/O capacity    -   Same number of disks with the same characteristics

FIG. 13 Template Example

FIG. 13 shows an example of an infrastructure design template havingpredetermined parts of the computing infrastructure, predeterminedrelationships between the parts, and having a limited number of optionsto be completed. In this case it is suitable for a decentralised SDbusiness process, without security or availability features. The figureshows three computer systems coupled by a network labelled “AI_network”,the right hand of the three systems corresponding to a masterapplication server, and the central one corresponds to slave applicationservers as shown in FIG. 7. Hence it is decentralized. AI is anabbreviation of Adaptive Infrastructure. The left hand one of thecomputer systems is for a database. The type of each computer system isspecified, in this case as a BL20/Xen. The central one, corresponding toslave application servers has an attribute “range =0 . . . n”. Thismeans the template allows any number of these slave application servers.

The master application server is coupled to a box labelledAI_GroundedExecutionService:AppServer, indicating it can be used to runsuch a software element. It has an associated AIDeploymentSetting boxwhich contains configuration information and deployment informationsufficient to allow the AI_GroundedExecutionService to be automaticallyinstalled, deployed and managed. TheAI_GroundedExecutionService:AppServer is shown as containing threecomponents, labelled AI_GroundedExecutionComponents, and each having anassociated AIDeploymentSetting box. A first of these components is adialog work process, for executing the application components of stepsof the business process, another is an update process, responsible forcommitting work to persistent storage, and another is an enqueueprocess, for managing locks on a database. As shown, the range attributeis 2 . . . n for the update and the dialog work process, meaningmultiple instances of these parts are allowed.

The slave application server has a GroundedExecutionService having onlyone type of AI_GroundedExecutionComponent for any number of dialog workprocesses. The slave application server is shown having arangePolicy=Time function, meaning it is allowed to be active at giventimes. Again the service and the execution component each have anassociated AIDeploymentSetting box.

The master and slave application servers and the database computersystem have an operating system shown as AI_disk: OSDisk. The masterapplication server is shown with an AI_Disk: CIDisk as storage for useby the application components. For the network, each computer system hasa network interface shown as AI_Nic1, coupled to the network shown byAI_Network :subnet1.

The database computer system is coupled to a box labelledAI_GroundedExecutionService: Database, which has only one type ofAI_GroundedExecutionComponent, SD DB for the database. Again the serviceand the execution component each have an associated AIDeploymentSettingbox. AIDeploymentSetting carries the configuration and managementinformation used to deploy, configure, start, manage and change thecomponent. Further details of an example of this are described belowwith reference to FIG. 14. This computer system is coupled to storagefor the database labelled AI_Disk: DBDisk.

Optionally the template can have commands to be invoked by the tools,when generating the grounded model, or generating a changed groundedmodel to change an existing grounded model. Such commands can bearranged to limit the options available, and can use as inputs, parts ofthe template specifying some of the infrastructure design. They can alsouse parts of the unbound model as inputs.

FIG. 14 Grounded Model

The Grounded Model may be generated by a design tool as it transformsthe Unbound Model into the Grounded Model. It can be regarded as acandidate Grounded Model until evaluated and selected as the chosenGrounded Model. The following are some of the characteristics of theexample Grounded Model of FIG. 14 compared to the template shown in FIG.13, from which it is derived.

-   -   The number of instances of GroundedExecutionComponent has been        specified.    -   The GroundedExecutionComponents are executed by a        GroundedExecutionService. The execution relationship is        consistent with that expressed in the Application Packaging        Model.    -   The GroundedExecutionServices are run on a ComputerSystem whose        type has been selected from the Infrastructure Capability Model.    -   There are two update components, Update1 and Update2. There are        two DialogWorkProcesses, DialogWorkProcess1 and        DialogWorkProcess2.    -   The number of slave application servers has been set at zero.

The management system is arranged to make these choices to derive theGrounded Model from the template using the Unbound Model. In the exampleshown, the criteria used for the choice includes the total capacity ofthe system, which must satisfy the time varying Performance Requirementsin the Custom Model. The required capacity is determined by combiningthese Performance Requirements with the aggregated ResourceDemands[Direct and Indirect] of the Application Performance Model. If the firstchoice proves to provide too little capacity, or perhaps too much, thenother choices can be made and evaluated. Other examples can havedifferent criteria and different ways of evaluating how close thecandidate grounded model is to being a best fit.

In some examples the server may only have an OS disk attached; that isbecause the convention in such installations is to NFS mount the CI diskto get its SAP executable files. Other example templates could haveselectable details or options such as details of the CIDisk and theDBDisk being 100 GB, 20MB/sec, non Raid, and so on. The OS disks can beof type EVA800. The master and slave application servers can have 2 to 5dialog work processes. Computer systems are specified as having 3 GBstorage, 2.6 GHz CPUs and SLES 10-Xen operating system for example.Different parameters can be tried to form candidate Grounded Modelswhich can be evaluated to find the best fit for the desired performanceor capacity or other criteria.

The Grounded Model therefore specifies the precise number and types ofrequired instances of software and hardware deployable entities, such asGroundedExecutionComponent, GroundedExecutionService, andAIComputerSystem. AIDeploymentSettings can include for example:

-   -   InfrastructureSettings such as threshold information for        infrastructure management components, for example        MaxCPUUtilization—if it rises above the set figure, say 60%, an        alarm should be triggered.    -   Management policy can specify further policy information for the        management components—e.g. flex up if utilization rises above        60%    -   GroundedDeploymentSettings which can include all command line        and configuration information so that the system can be        installed, configured and started in a fully functional state.    -   SettingData which can provide additional configuration        information that can override information provided in the        GroundedDeploymentSettings. This allows many GroundedComponents        to share the same GroundedDeploymentSettings (c.f. a notion of        typing) with specific parameters or overrides provided by        SettingData. Both the GroundedDeploymentSettings and SettingData        are interpreted by the Deployment Service during deployment.    -   Data related to possible changes to the component such as        instructions to be carried out when managing changes to the        component, to enable more automation of changes.

Not all attributes are set in the Grounded Model. For example, it doesnot make sense to set MAC addresses in the Grounded Model, since thereis not yet any assigned physical resource.

FIG. 15, An Alternative Adaptive Infrastructure Design Template

FIG. 15 shows an alternative adaptive infrastructure design template, ina form suitable for a centralised secure SD business process. Comparedto FIG. 13, this has only one computer system, hence it is centralised.It shows security features in the form of a connection of the network toan external subnet via a firewall. This is shown by an interfaceAI_Nic:nicFW, and a firewall shown by AI_Appliance: FireWall.

Other templates can be envisaged having any configuration. Otherexamples can include a decentralised secure SD template, a decentralisedhighly available SD template, and a decentralised, secure and highlyavailable SD template.

Bound Model

A Bound Model Instance for a SD system example could have in addition tothe physical resource assignment, other parameters set such as subnetmasks and MAC addresses. A Deployed Model could differ from the BoundModel in only one respect. It shows the binding information for themanagement services running in the system. All the entities would havemanagement infrastructure in the form of for example a managementservice. The implementation mechanism used for the interface to themanagement services is not defined here, but could be a reference to aWeb Service or a SmartFrog component for example. The management servicecan be used to change state and observe the current state. Neither thestate information made available by the management service, nor theoperations performed by it, are necessarily defined in the core of themodel, but can be defined in associated models.

One example of this could be to manage a virtual machine migration. Theapplication managing the migration would use the management servicerunning on the PhysicalComputerSystem to do the migration. Once themigration is completed, the management application would update thedeployed model and bound models to show the new physical system. Careneeds to be taken to maintain consistency of models. All previous modelinstances are kept in the model repository, so when the migration iscomplete, there would be a new instance (version) of the bound anddeployed models.

Information Hiding and the Model Information Flow

It is not always the case that for the MIF all tools and every actor cansee all the information in the model. In particular it is not the casefor deployment services having a security model which requires strongseparation between actors. For example, there can be a very strongseparation between a utility management plane and farms of virtualmachines. If a grounded model is fed to the deployment services of themanagement plane by an enterprise, to deploy the model, it will notreturn any binding information showing the binding of virtual tophysical machines, that will be kept inside the management plane. Thatmeans there is no way of telling to what hardware that farm is bound orwhat two farms might be sharing. What is returned from the managementplane could include the IP address of the virtual machines in the farms(it only deals with virtual machines) and the login credentials forthose machines in a given farm. The management plane is trusted tomanage a farm so that it gets the requested resources. Once thedeployment service has finished working, one could use applicationinstallation and management services to install, start and manage theapplications. In general different tools will see projections of theMIF. It is possible to extract from the MIF models the information thesetools require and populate the models with the results the tools return.It will be possible to transform between the MIF models and the dataformat that the various tools use.

Implementation:

The software parts such as the models, the model repository, and thetools or services for manipulating the models, can be implemented usingany conventional programming language, including languages such as Java,or C compiled following established practice. The servers and networkelements can be implemented using conventional hardware withconventional processors. The processing elements need not be identical,but should be able to communicate with each other, e.g. by exchange ofIP messages.

The foregoing description of embodiments of the invention has beenpresented for purposes of illustration and description. It is notintended to be exhaustive or to limit the invention to the precise formdisclosed, and modifications and variations are possible in light of theabove teachings or may be acquired from practice of the invention. Theembodiments were chosen and described in order to explain the principlesbehind the invention and its practical applications to enable oneskilled in the art to utilize the invention in various embodiments andwith various modifications as are suited to the particular usecontemplated. Other variations can be conceived within the scope of theclaims.

1. A method of automated deployment managed by a service provider, of acomputer based business process having a number of functional steps, fora given enterprise, the method having the steps of: generating a modelof the business process, the model having a representation of anarrangement of software application components, for implementing thefunctional steps, and having a representation of computinginfrastructure, for running the software application components onspecified enterprise dedicated hardware, and suitable for automateddeployment, and deploying the model on the hardware dedicated to theenterprise, with an interface for the service provider to enable ongoingmanagement of the deployed process by the service provider.
 2. Themethod of claim 1, a location of the dedicated hardware being remotefrom the service provider and the interface being arranged for remotemanagement.
 3. The method of claim 2, the computing infrastructurecomprising virtualized entities.
 4. The method of claim 3, having thestep of providing redundant hardware capacity, sized to enablevirtualized entities of the modeled business process to be moved offtheir corresponding hardware components onto the redundant hardwarewhile the deployed business process is still running.
 5. The method ofclaim 2, having the step of receiving from the enterprise alterations tofunctional steps or non functional requirements, and generating anupdated model based on the alterations, and determining any changes inrequirements for the dedicated hardware corresponding to thealterations.
 6. The method of claim 2, having the step of downloading atleast the model generation part to run at an enterprise location.
 7. Themethod of claim 1, having the step of monitoring behaviour of thedeployed process in use and sending an indication of the behaviourthrough the interface to the service provider.
 8. The method of claim 1,having the step of selecting one of a number of predetermined templatesof computing infrastructure design, choosing parameters to fill theselected template, evaluating the filled template by simulatingoperation to see how well any non functional requirements are met, andaltering the selection of template or altering the parameters accordingto the evaluation.
 9. The method of claim 1 having the step ofdetermining from the model a specification of requirements for thededicated hardware.
 10. Software on a machine readable medium which whenexecuted carries out the method of claim
 1. 11. A system, for automateddeployment managed by a service provider, of a computer based businessprocess having a number of functional steps, for a given enterprise, thesystem having: a model generation part arranged to generate a model ofthe process, the model having a representation of an arrangement ofsoftware application components, for implementing the functional steps,and having a representation of computing infrastructure, for running thesoftware application components on specified enterprise dedicatedhardware, and suitable for automated deployment, and a deployment partarranged to provide automated deployment of the model on the hardwarededicated to the enterprise, with an interface for the service providerto enable ongoing management of the deployed process by the serviceprovider.
 12. The system of claim 11, a location of the dedicatedhardware being remote from the service provider and the interface beingarranged for remote management.
 13. The system of claim 12, thecomputing infrastructure comprising virtualized entities.
 14. The systemof claim 13, the model incorporating redundant hardware capacity toenable virtualized entities to be moved off their corresponding hardwarecomponents onto the redundant hardware while the process is stillrunning.
 15. The system of claim 12, having an update part arranged toenable the enterprise to input alterations to functional steps or nonfunctional requirements, and to cause the model generation part togenerate an updated model based on the alterations, and determine anychanges in requirements for the dedicated hardware corresponding to thealtered functional steps or non functional requirements.
 16. The systemof claim 12, having a download part to download at least the modelgeneration part to run at an enterprise location.
 17. The system ofclaim 11, the model being arranged to incorporate a monitoring part tomonitor behaviour of the deployed process in use and to send anindication of the behaviour through the interface to the serviceprovider.
 18. The system of claim 11, the model generation part beingarranged to select one of a number of predetermined templates ofcomputing infrastructure design, choose parameters to fill the selectedtemplate, evaluate the filled template by simulating operation to seehow well any non functional requirements are met, and alter theselection of template or alter the parameters according to theevaluation.
 19. The system of claim 11 arranged to determine from themodel a specification of requirements for the dedicated hardware.